A Utah study has provided further evidence that children are at greater risk when they ride in the front seat of a car and particularly when they are not using seat belts or safety seats.
The research, published recently in the journal Pediatrics, involved 5,751 Utah children 14 years old and younger who were involved in serious vehicle accidents from 1992 through 1996.
The study found children "are 1.7 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed when they are in the front seat vs. the rear seat," said Dr. Marc Berg, a critical-care physician at Primary Children's Medical Center.
"When they use restraints (seat belts or safety seats), regardless of where they are sitting in the car, they are 2.7 times more likely to survive without serious injury or death than unrestrained passengers," he said.
Of the 5,751 children studied, 2,383 were seriously injured; 134 were admitted to hospitals; and 53 were killed.
Of those who died, 60 percent rode in the front seat, and 70 percent were not using seat belts or safety seats. Of all the children studied, 47 percent rode in the front seat and 40 percent were not properly restrained.
"This is the same number reported in other places," Berg said. "It continues to be alarmingly high. If people really knew how effective seat belts are, they would be used more often."
Yet, "we have parents come in with (injured) kids who were unrestrained, and they say, 'I'm glad he wasn't strapped in because that car is flat as a pancake,' " Berg said. "That statement is shocking in its ignorance."
Berg conducted the study with statistician Lawrence Cook of the University of Utah's Intermountain Injury Control Research Center and three colleagues at Primary Children's: emergency-room physician Howard Corneli and critical-care physicians J. Michael Dean and Donald Vernon. Dean also directs the injury control research center.
The findings are "not surprising at all. I believe the whole thing," said Rhonda Parker, a highway safety instructor and child car-seat specialist for Utah's Department of Public Safety.
Parents who fail to make their children use safety seats or seat belts "are lazy" or believe "it won't happen to me," Parker said.